The Lakoskys have hunted turkey for about 14 years on their own farm in Iowa and also in Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska. They harvest 2 to 5 turkeys a year. Turkey hunting can be done in both springtime and fall.

Lee noted that hunting turkey is “more fun in the spring because that’s their mating season so they’re gobbling and prance and really putting on a display and you can call to them. In the fall, they’re gobbling on the roost and just grouped up andyou gotta just see which style they’re going” to forage on the ground for food.

But the early bird catches the turkeys — you must start before sunrise.

In the brush, the Lakoskys usually conceal a blind — a camouflage pop up tent with mesh windows to shoot from. Lee said the next step is to put a couple of plastic decoys on the ground that look like the hens, female turkey, or jakes, young immature gobblers, to attract the matured male turkeys.

They listen for a gobble from the turkey’s roost in a tree “and when they fly down, just start calling them and try to get as close as you are able to, ” with a special turkey caller with a reed they blow into, Lee said.

“Basically their routine is, they fly up, roost at night and in the morning, to continue efforts to round up their hens” or look for food on the ground, he said.

The outdoor Tv celebrities pride themselves on being clean and humane hunters. If they aim with a bow, their preferred and more challenging method, they shoot for the turkey’s lungs — and with the shotgun, for the head.

Tiffany said, “We have targets that are in the shape of a turkey. We practise all season long to make sure we have ethical shoots and do our best.”

Also, “turkeys are super mean, ” Lee uncovered. “They fight, have spurs on their feet and try to keep the hens from the other ones. They’re super smart and they’ve get great eyesight. If you blink, basically, they see you and run. There’s no curiosity about a turkey. They see something that isn’t perfectly right, they’re gone.”

Tiffany added, “A wild turkey can run as fast as 25 miles per hour and fly up to 55 miles per hour.”

She said that it’s important to heed the hunter’s mantra, yes, to be very, very quiet. “For Lee, it’s easy, ” Tiffany laughed. “For me, I have to consciously make an effort to stay quiet and not talk.”

Afterwards, they pull the intestines out and clean the turkey, plucking the feathers and using paraffin wax to remove the feathers if they want to keep the skin on.

Tiffany, who is pregnant with the couple’s second infant, due in April, said she’s still hunting while expecting and they have even gone turkey hunting with their son Cameron, 1. “He slept through the whole thing, ” in blind people, she said.

For Thanksgiving, they will consume their very own hunted turkey, plus pheasant and duck with relatives visiting from Minnesota.

Lee’s cooking tips-off? “Have grandma do it, ” he said.

The pair plans to release a cookbook next fall including recipes from both their moms for various hunted animals and birds they hunt.

Tiffany recommends hunting turkey in a group: “It’s such a social athletic is comparable to, like, deer hunting. There are period we have five or six people out there turkey hunting together. You just have so much more fun.”